High-pressure melt growth and transport properties of SiP, SiAs, GeP, and GeAs 2D layered semiconductors

Abstract

Silicon and Germanium monopnictides SiP, SiAs, GeP and GeAs form a family of 2D layered semiconductors. We have succeeded in growing bulk single crystals of these compounds by melt-growth under high pressure (0.5-1 GPa) in a cubic anvil hot press. Large (mm-size), shiny, micaceous crystals of GeP, GeAs and SiAs were obtained, and could be exfoliated into 2D flakes. Small and brittle crystals of SiP were yielded by this method. High-pressure sintered polycrystalline SiP and GeAs have also been successfully used as a precursor in the Chemical Vapor Transport growth of these crystals in the presence of I${}_2$ as a transport agent. All compounds are found to crystallize in the expected layered structure and do not undergo any structural transition at low temperature, as shown by Raman spectroscopy down to T=5K. All materials exhibit a semiconducting behavior. The electrical resistivity of GeP, GeAs and SiAs is found to depend on temperature following a 2D-Variable Range Hopping conduction mechanism. The availability of bulk crystals of these compounds opens new perspectives in the field of 2D semiconducting materials for device applications.

Accepted for publication 6 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• Black phosphorus field-effect transistors
• Integrated Circuits Based on Bilayer MoS2 Transistors
• Germanene: a novel two-dimensional Germanium allotrope akin to Graphene and Silicene
• Epitaxial Growth of a Silicene Sheet

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Structural, Vibrational and Electronic Properties of Single Layer Hexagonal Crystals of Groups IV and V
• Anisotropic mechanical properties and strain tuneable band-gap in single-layer SiP, SiAs, GeP and GeAs
• Prediction of group IV-V hexagonal binary monolayers
• Electron spin dynamics of two-dimensional layered materials
• Full-zone Persistent Spin Textures with Giant Spin Splitting in Two-dimensional Group IV-V Compounds
• Anisotropic Rashba splitting dominated by out-of-plane spin polarization in two-dimensional Janus $X{A}_{2}Y$ ($A$= Si, Sn, Ge; $X,Y$= Sb, Bi) with surface imperfection
• Structural and Electrical Properties of Bilayer SiX (X= N, P, As and Sb)
• Exploring 2D Materials by High Pressure Synthesis: hBN, Mg-hBN, b-P, b-AsP, and GeAs
• Synergistic effect of oxygen and water on the environmental reactivity of 2D layered GeAs